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Stillaguamish Festival of the River renews focus on community education

Kirk BoxleitnerTanya White, who danced at last year's Stillaguamish Festival of the River and Pow Wow, has been dancing at pow pows since she was 3 years old. — Kirk Boxleitner
Tanya White, who danced at last year’s Stillaguamish Festival of the River and Pow Wow, has been dancing at pow pows since she was 3 years old.

Kirk Boxleitner, Arlington Times

ARLINGTON — As the Stillaguamish Festival of the River and Pow Wow head into their 24th year on Saturday, Aug. 10, and Sunday, Aug. 11, festival coordinator Tamara Neuffer has promised attendees that they’ll encounter an entirely different map of the grounds to go along with the event’s renewed focus on community education.

“Rather than placing them in separate areas, we’ve reorganized our layout of educational and vendor booths to mimic the Stillaguamish River and its tributaries,” said Neuffer, who also serves as the education and outreach coordinator for the Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians, which presents the festival and pow wow at the River Meadows County Park, located at 20416 Jordan Rd. in Arlington. “By simulating a journey down the river, we hope to give people a sense of why it’s important to protect this watershed. We’re really stepping up our game to be more interactive and find better ways of reaching out.”

To further engage festival-goers in the event’s educational mission, Neuffer hopes to incentivize it through “passports” that require attendees to receive stamps from each educational booth before they can become eligible for raffle prizes.

“We’ve also increased the size of our kids’ zone, which is now called the ‘Fun Zone’ and sponsored by the Community Health Plan of Washington,” Neuffer said. “We’re teaching kids to get outdoors by showing them all the fun things they can do. We’ve really beefed up the activities for kids and adults alike to make this even more of a family friendly event.”

Neuffer believes that visitors to this year’s pow wow will likewise find it even more inviting than before.

“This year, we’ll have the Yellow Bird Dancers doing hoop-dancing, as well as a Hispanic dance troupe,” Neuffer said. “We’ve installed a roof with lights over the pow wow area, and we’ve even put bleacher seating in the back. I think some people might not have been sure if they were welcome at the pow wows, so hopefully, these steps will make them less tentative about being spectators to that event.”

Just as the festival’s stated mission is to aid people who live and work in the surrounding region in understanding how their actions can help make their environment healthier for people, fish and other wildlife, so too does Neuffer see the potential of the festival and its pow wow to promote cultural awareness and outreach efforts.

“Our musical lineup is what brings a lot of people in, which allows us to educate a lot of people at one time,” Neuffer said, touting the two stages of performers that will be running concurrently on both days. “We want to make learning about the environment and cultural communities fun for them.”

The gates to the River Meadows County Park open at 10 a.m. on both days of the Stillaguamish Festival of the River and Pow Wow. While admission to the event is free, parking is $5 per car until 4 p.m., after which it becomes $10. For more information, log onto http://festivaloftheriver.com.

Amber Alert kidnap suspect may be using explosives, officials say

By Kate Mather, Tony Perry and Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times
August 9, 2013, 3:15 a.m.

Authorities searching for a missing San Diego County teenager allegedly abducted by a family friend stretched warned that her alleged abductor might be using explosives.

The suspect, James Lee DiMaggio, 40, might have abandoned his blue Nissan Versa and left it booby-trapped with explosives, authorities said, warning people that if they find the vehicle or anywhere he might have stopped, they should stay away.

DiMaggio is an avid outdoorsman, and authorities are also urging people to be on the lookout at campsites and other rural areas where he might be hiding.

Four days into the search for 16-year-old Hannah Anderson, authorities were no closer to finding her or DiMaggio, though numerous tips have poured in to law enforcement agencies in multiple states.

“Basically, the search area is the United States, Canada and Mexico,” said Lt. Glenn Giannantonio of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. “The search area is North America.”

As the search fanned out Thursday, authorities had no confirmed sightings of Anderson or DiMaggio, who is believed to have abducted the teenager Sunday after killing her mother and 8-year-old brother in Boulevard, a rural border town in eastern San Diego County.

An Amber Alert for Hannah Anderson and her brother Ethan was active in four states Thursday, though authorities said it was possible she might have been taken to Texas, or even Canada. Boulevard is about five miles north of the Mexican border, and the FBI was working with Mexican authorities to search for DiMaggio, Giannantonio said.

New details in the case emerged Thursday about the death of Hannah’s mother, 44-year-old Christina Anderson of Lakeside, another community east of San Diego. Anderson died of blunt force trauma and may have been hit with a crowbar, a source close to the investigation said.

Anderson’s body was found in a stand-alone garage near DiMaggio’s burning home, the source said. The body of a child was found in the house. Although the child has not been identified because the body was badly burned and DNA difficult to obtain, family members have said they believe it to be Ethan.

Christina Anderson’s dog was also found dead on the property, Giannantonio said.

An arrest warrant for murder has been issued for DiMaggio, and a judge agreed to set bail at $1 million if he is arrested, San Diego County sheriff’s officials said Thursday.

As the Amber Alert widened to Nevada, authorities said DiMaggio might have changed vehicles.

Cleveland Abduction Survivors: There Is Hope For America’s Missing Children

Residents listen to speeches before releasing balloons in support of the three women found in a house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio May 9, 2013. (AP/David Duprey)

The three women held for years by Ariel Castro have used their public stature to highlight the child abduction problem.

By Frederick Reese, Mint Press

In Cleveland, kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight watched Tuesday as the house that served as her prison for a decade was torn down. Surrounded by members of the county prosecutor’s office and a group of Guardian Angels grasping dozens of yellow balloons — each representing a child that was abducted but not recovered — which she released, Knight stated that her visit had a simple purpose: that there is hope.

“Nobody was there for me when I was missing, and I want the people to know, including the mothers, that they can have strength, they can have hope, and their child will come back,” Knight said.

Knight, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry were kidnapped and held captive by Ariel Castro at his home at 2207 Seymour Ave. until Berry kicked her way through the front door with the assistance of a bystander and escaped last May. On August 1, Castro was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole plus an additional millenium in prison after pleading guilty to the 937 counts he was indicted with, including multiple counts of rape, kidnapping and murder.

Since their release, all three women have used the public attention afforded them to highlight the child abduction problem in this country. “Our work is not done. We gotta keep our eyes and ears open. Don’t let these girls go in vain,” said Felix DeJesus, father of Gina DeJesus, at Cleveland’s Latino Fest parade last weekend.

Child abductions in America

According to the last comprehensive national study taken on the state of missing children, completed in 1999, there are approximately 800,000 children under the age of 18 reported missing in the United States, with more than 58,000 estimated to have been abducted by non-family members. 115 of these cases are estimated to be a “stereotypical” kidnapping, in which a stranger kidnapped the child, held him/her 50 miles or more away from the abduction site, and killed, ransomed or committed to permanently holding the child.

The remainder fall into categories including sex trafficking, familial abductions, assisted runaways and random assault. The recovery rate of missing or abducted children stands at 97 percent today — a 35 percent increase from 1990. However, for the approximately 24,000 children that have yet to be found, the road home may be hard and even impossible to find.

“It was a regular shopping mall that my parents and I went school shopping at every year, but this guy managed to exchange phone numbers with me,” said Holly Smith, a child sex trafficking survivor, to HuffPost Live in reflection of her own abduction story. Smith was interviewed after the announcement that the FBI has recovered more than 100 victims of child sex trafficking and arrested 150 pimps in a three-day nationwide sweep. Smith was 14 when she was abducted and was held for only 36 hours before being arrested for prostitution. “We talked on the phone for about two weeks, and he sort of tapped into my interests and my concerns and he was able to play off my vulnerabilities.”

“He was able to lure me away from home with things like — he could help me become a model, he could help me become a songwriter because I really wanted to join a rock band. Things that might sound not so real to an adult. They worked well on me at 14. And so he lured me away from home, and within hours of running away, I was forced into prostitution in Atlantic City, N.J.”

Stories such as Smith’s and the case of Jocelyn Rojas — a 5-years-old Lancaster, Penn. girl who was saved from abduction by an attentive 15-years-old boy, Temar Boggs, who noticed a car being driven in a peculiar manner — seem to capture the public’s imagination and draw a prompt response. But what happens when the abduction case does not draw a public response?

Adult abductions and law enforcement inadequacies

Last week, one of the three men held captive by 31-year-old Walter Renard Jones, William Merle Greenawalt, 79, has died of complications due to malnourishment. Jones has been charged with two counts of elderly abuse with serious bodily injury. It has been alleged that Jones held Greenawalt, Dean Cottingham, 59, and John Edward Padget, 64, in his garage so that he could collect on the men’s assistance checks.

In cases such as this, the inadequacies of the way law enforcement handles such situations start to show. While recent efforts, such as the AMBER Alert System, have resulted in a net improvement in recovery rates, abducted adults are considered low-priority. Many police departments will not take a missing person case for an adult prior to 24 hours after the disappearance, and most will not extend full resources to the case, due to the possibility that the missing person wishes to not be found.

While police response rates for abducted children to the child’s home or scene of abduction are modest — an estimated 68 percent, according to the 1999 Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Throwaway Children (NISMART-2) — the response rate for adult disappearances is dramatically less. Recently, Butte County has been profiled in the media for its efforts to create its first master list of missing persons.

“It’s not completely surprising that there was no master list. If someone is missing today, they most likely will still be missing tomorrow. But if a homicide or some other serious crime occurs today, limited investigative resources would be more productively spent on those immediate cases,” reported the Chino Enterprise-Record on the Butte County Sheriff’s Office’s efforts. “That’s how a file on the missing might go missing as well. It’s not that it’s unimportant. It’s just that it’s not as timely.”

In light of dwindling budgets, shifting priorities and an ill-defined division of jurisdictions between the federal government and local authorities in missing persons cases, many cases get overlooked or ignored, and situations such as the Jaycee Dugard abduction — in which Dugard was held captive for more than 18 years by a sex offender who was enrolled as a parolee — and the Ariel Castro case are allowed to proliferate. For those still waiting to be found, more needs to be done.

Several unconfirmed Amber Alert sightings in W. Wash.

SEATTLE (AP) – The Washington State Patrol says it has received several unconfirmed reports of people spotting a car wanted in connection with two deaths and a child abduction in Southern California.

Sgt. Jason Hicks says people up and down the Interstate 5 corridor have reported seeing the blue Nissan Versa being sought by authorities. Some reports have come in from the Vancouver, Wash., area and others from the Tacoma area.

There was also an unconfirmed sighting on the Olympic Peninsula, in which the caller reported seeing a blue Nissan hatchback with a man driving and a female passenger in the back. The caller said the car appeared to have California plates.

Troopers have been responding to each report but haven’t located the car.

Hicks also says State Patrol personnel at Washington’s ferry terminals are keeping an eye out, and that once the Patrol received information about the Amber Alert from California authorities, it forwarded the information to Canadian officials, the U.S. Border Patrol and Idaho police.

The Amber Alert was expanded to Oregon, Washington and Nevada as authorities search for James Lee DiMaggio, 40, who is believed to have kidnapped 16-year-old Hannah Anderson. DiMaggio is believed to be driving a blue 2013 Nissan Versa with California plate 6WCU986.

Source: Komo News

Anyone who sees DiMaggio or the car is asked to call 911.

DiMaggio is also a suspect in the death of Christina Anderson, Hannah’s mother, and the possible death or abduction of her 8-year old son Ethan.

On Sunday night, authorities found the body of Christina Anderson near a dead dog when they extinguished flames at DiMaggio’s rural home. A child’s body was found later as they sifted through rubble in Boulevard, a remote hamlet 65 miles east of San Diego on the U.S.-Mexico border.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Capt. Duncan Fraser said Thursday that evidence recovered at James Lee DiMaggio’s home east of San Diego suggests he might have fled with homemade explosives.

Fraser says it’s possible DiMaggio was infatuated with the girl and her grandfather said Wednesday it appeared DiMaggio had carefully planned the abduction.

Also Wednesday, a friend of Hannah Anderson said DiMaggio told Hannah he had a crush on her and would date her if they were the same age.

“She was a little creeped out by it. She didn’t want to be alone with him,” said the friend, Marissa Chavez.

Choose Love And Walk the Rivers to Save Them

By Sharon M. Day, ICTMN

My culture teaches that as an Ojibwe I have an inherent obligation to not only protect myself, my family, and my tribe but ultimately all humanity, including the environment that sustains us. We are spirit beings who came into this world to live the human experience. That spirit is love and it resides in our hearts.

My own struggle began early as I found a place of equality among my family, friends, and community because I was born lesbian and enjoy my life as a two spirit person. The Creator has smiled on me by giving me the opportunity to help others struggling with the still prevalent homophobic and sexist attitudes; not to mention that we also live as a conquered nation of people.

I have protested, walked picket lines, and was arrested for protecting Camp Coldwater back in 1999. These confrontation tactics seem no longer effective and may in fact, hinder progress for change. Earlier in my career I took a different approach by working within the political system. While there have been minor but important victories in a few social policy areas, I remain somewhat disappointed that more have not been moved to action.

In recent years, I have led two water walks to pray for the water and to raise the public awareness about the pollution affecting our waters. As I have crossed the United States twice from south to north and north to south, I have observed the individuals who have taken this journey with me. Carrying the water in a ceremonious way every day creates transformation. The water is a living entity and as such, it has a spirit. This spirit responds to the love shown to it. In this way, we have changed the way we think, feel and act toward our mother earth and the water.

At recent events, a white, female environmental scientist suggested that environmentalists were the new “abolitionists.” That one way to create change was to practice civil disobedience and populate the jails to save the environment. I wondered if she realized that 80% of the jails are already filled with people of color. Also many people of color do not have the luxury of taking 15 days off without pay to make a statement. I wondered what Black people might think of her analogy likening environmentalists to abolitionists. It took the abolitionists 100 years to end slavery. I’m not sure we have 100 years to save ourselves.

Meanwhile, Native peoples are taking a stand for clean water and land issues, by protesting against corporations and governments building the pipelines, blocking roads and railroad tracks, even confiscating a “thumper truck” to stop shale oil exploration in New Brunswick, Canada.

More direct actions are being planned all summer long. I respect the choices and the stands they are willing to take for sovereignty, for the land, for the water. However, some of what I hear is disturbing. For example the desire to renegotiate the terms of the agreements for mineral, oil and gas extraction so native people get a fair share of the profits. We could spend an entire article discussing the wrongs of capitalism that promotes hoarding and greed. Exactly opposite of what our ancestors valued. What does it matter who benefits or gets richer if we lose our precious water and continue to destroy the land?

An exception is a reserve in Canada where the people stand to earn over 59 million dollars selling solar energy. I wish more of our tribes would invest in renewable energy and create employment for their people.

Perhaps there will come a time again, where I am willing to engage in confrontation and I will be willing to put my life on the line, but for right now, I will choose ceremony allowing the asemaa to lead me.

I plan to continue walking the rivers that are endangered. I believe love is the healing grace. I choose to move forward in the spirit of love and bring people along with me in ceremony. The spirit lives in love, love is where the spirit lives.

Can an Indigenous world-view of respect, love, and kindness create a revolution founded in these values to create a shared world of love and respect for the Earth, our mama akii and the water, sacred water, m’de nibi?

Sharon Day, Ojibwe, is the executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force.

Chaos on the Clearwater River: Second night of tar sands megaload blockades

Source: Earth First! Newswire

After a three-hour blockade involving upwards of 150-200 people from the Nez Perce Nation, Idle No More, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide, activists once again dedicated themselves last night to stopping megaload shipments through Idaho.

Omega Morgan, the company responsible for the transport of the 200-ton megaload, has been warned by the Forest Service that the shipment is unauthorized, and the Nez Perce tribe is seeking an injunction. However, Omega Morgan is trying to sneak the megaload through against the law, so direct action must be taken.

The Nez Perce put out a call yesterday for activists to join them in renewed efforts to stop the tar sands equipment from moving through Highway 12. More than 50 protestors came out. They were met by a force of 40-50 police officers in a fleet of cars.

Police gave protesters 15 minutes to speak out as they blocked the roadway, before being forced to move to the shoulder. Some young activists decided to maintain the presence of the blockade by heaving boulders and large rocks into the streets, which held traffic up further.

Several Nez Perce tribe-members were arrested, adding to the 19 arrested on Monday night (including the entire executive committee).

Mother Earth’s Slow Burn: Climate Change Indicators Climbing, Says NOAA

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

The signs of climate change—rising oceans, melting Arctic ice and increasing greenhouse gases among them—are continuing inexorably, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a report issued on Tuesday August 6.

Culling data from 384 scientists hailing from 52 countries, NOAA said in its report, 2012 State of the Climate, that globally 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record. However temperature was just the tip of the melting iceberg.

“Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate—carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place,” said Acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan in a statement summarizing the peer-reviewed report.

Arctic changes, including temperature increases and increased ice melt, were the most marked exhibitors of climate change and were highlighted in the federal study, released online by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

“Conditions in the Arctic were a major story of 2012, with the region experiencing unprecedented change and breaking several records,” NOAA said in its statement. “Sea ice shrank to its smallest summer-minimum extent since satellite records began 34 years ago. In addition, more than 97 percent of the Greenland ice sheet showed some form of melt during the summer, four times greater than the 1981-2010 average melt extent.”

Oceans’ heat content stayed at its record high in the upper half-mile of depth, with marked temperature increases below that, at 2,300 to 6,600 feet, NOAA said. Although temperatures per se have not warmed significantly over the past 10 years, there have been “remarkable changes in key climate indicators” such as dramatically rising ocean heat content, record summer Arctic sea ice melt and the melting of nearly the entire top layer of Greenland’s ice sheet last summer, said Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, to the Associated Press. Sea level was also at record highs.

“It’s critically important to compile a big picture,” Karl told the news wire. “The signs that we see are of a warming world.”

These conditions and trends played out most strongly in the Arctic, which is manifesting the most dramatic symptoms of climate change, NOAA said.

Polarity in the saline content of water was also noted, with high-evaporation areas containing saltier waters and low-evaporation regions showing more fresh water, NOAA said. This suggests that “precipitation is increasing in already rainy areas and evaporation is intensifying in drier locations,” NOAA said.

Although La Niña helped keep ocean levels down during the first half of 2011, NOAA reported, they “rebounded to reach record highs in 2012,” with global sea levels increasing on average 3.2 millimeters per year over the past two decades.

Likewise, greenhouse gas concentrations, the main ones being carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, continued their increase in 2012, NOAA said. The global economic downturn actually reduced manmade emissions slightly, NOAA said, but 2011 emissions were at a record high, with CO2 in particular surpassing the 400 parts per million mark in at monitoring stations in the Arctic.

NOAA officials emphasized that they were not interpreting the data, merely passing it on, letting the facts speak for themselves.

“This report does not try to explain why we are seeing what we are seeing,” Karl told The Wall Street Journal. “The report is focused only on what the observations are telling us.”

Makah Tribe plans golf course, new cabins

Source: Round House Talk News

PORT ANGELES — The Makah tribe continues to add economic development in Neah Bay and is working on a nine-hole golf course to increase tourism and recreational opportunities.

New activities and more accommodations for visitors is a large part of the tribe’s current focus, Mike Rainey, enterprise business manager for the Makah tribal government, told an audience of about 40 at a Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon Monday at the Red Lion Hotel.

A parcel has been set aside on the Makah reservation to build a nine-hole recreational golf course in Neah Bay for the use of residents and for visiting fishermen who would welcome an alternate activity, Rainey said.

However, he said, there is no new activity on a previously discussed concept to build a zip-line park on Makah lands.

“There are a lot of people talking about it and no one doing it,” he said.

Currently, the tribe’s 2013 budget expects $7.2 million income from its resort, cabin and camping offerings, marina, restaurant and mini-mart, he said.

Rainey said that additional guest cabins are being built with more planned to accommodate an expected increase in visitors.

The tribe had a choice of importing prefabricated cabins or building them on site, he said.

A horde of humpies heading our way

By Wayne Kruse, The Herald

It’s time to start thinking pink.

For many seasoned anglers, Aug. 10 is the rule-of-thumb start to the odd-year pink salmon fishery in local saltwater. That means this weekend could see solid catch rates — instead of just a scattering of “humpies” — at Possession Bar and the stretch of shoreline between Mukilteo and the “shipwreck” known as Humpy Hollow.

River fishing will take longer to develop, particularly in this summer of very low, warm stream flows. But make no mistake, there’s a horde of humpies on the way. State Fish and Wildlife Department salmon managers expect upwards of 6 million pinks to enter Puget Sound, and another 6 million Fraser River fish to be available to Washington anglers in the San Juan Islands.

Predictions are for 1.25 million pinks to return to the Skagit River; 1 million to the Snohomish/Skykomish; 1.25 million to the Puyallup; and 1.3 million to the Green. And even though humpies are smallish and a couple of notches down the list of top table salmon, a million-plus fish off Mukilteo and in the Snohomish River will bring recreational fishermen out of the woodwork. Lots of fish, lots of fishing, lots of fun.

As of early this week, humpy reports were as follows:

n Skagit River: The Skagit pink run is usually a little earlier than that in the Snohomish system, and this summer seems to be following the script. The Skagit opened Aug. 1 up to Gilligan Creek, and good fishing was the rule in the lower end. Kevin John at Holiday Sports in Burlington said plunkers in the Mount Vernon area scored well fishing off the bars with red or pink Spin N Glos and shrimp.

“It was pretty decent,” John said. “There were actually more fish in the river early than we had expected.”

Young’s Bar at Mount Vernon bristled with plunking rods, as did the forks area and the “trestle” in Burlington. John said techniques changed farther upriver, to trolling spoons above Burlington and working jigs above Sedro-Woolley.

John said the third week of August is usually the peak for pink fishing in the Skagit, but that it may be a little earlier this year. He said the westside Whidbey Island beaches are putting out humpies consistently now to shore casters, including Fort Casey, Bush and Lagoon points, and North Beach at Deception Pass. Those folks are tossing Buzz Bombs and Rotators in pinks and greens, John said, concentrating on low slack and the first portion of the incoming tide.

n Snohomish River: The Sno opened Aug. 1 below Highway 9 to so-so results, said John Martinis at John’s Sporting Goods in north Everett. “I expect the river fishing to gradually improve, with the last week of August being the usual peak,” Martinis said.

He likes jig fishing for humpies in the lower Snohomish. Drift and cast quarter-ounce pink jigs to rolling fish or, better yet, anchor above a pod of fish showing well and fish jigs down to them. Try to get a feel for where the bottom is, he said, because the fish generally will be about a foot off the bottom.

“The Snohomish can be a little ‘grabby,'” he said, “so I suggest to customers they try the Danielson jigs. If you buy them in packages, they’re something like nine cents or 10 cents each, and you’re set for the whole day.”

The morning incoming tide is the best time to hit the lower Snohomish, and there are spots to fish from Lowell Rotary Park all the way up to Snohomish, on both sides of the river.

n Local saltwater: “The run is building,” said Mike Chamberlain of Ted’s Sport Center in Lynnwood. “A lot of guys fishing last weekend in Humpy Hollow hit two or three fish per boat. Limits? Not yet, but it won’t be long.”

He agreed that the westside Whidbey beaches are a good bet, casting 2- or 21/2-inch Buzz Bombs or Rotators in “pink, pink, and more pink.” Prime time, he says, is the last hour of the incoming tide through high slack and the first two hours of the ebb.

In saltwater, rig with a size “0” white dodger, 8-inch Coyote Flasher, or Gibbs white flasher; a 25-pound test leader two times the length of the dodger or 11/2 times the length of the flasher; and a pink mini-squid on either a single 3/0 hook or a double 2/0, tied close together. The trolling speed should be very slow, Chamberlain said, so your flasher/dodger swings side to side instead of rotating.

Early in the day, start at 30 feet, later dropping to 70 feet or deeper.

Humpy derby

Pink salmon have their own event with the debut this summer of the Bad Draw Humpy Showdown Derby, Aug. 24, rain or shine, in any water, fresh or salt, legally open to pink salmon fishing. The event is a fund-raiser for the Bad Draw Wrestling Club of Snohomish County and proceeds benefit youth sports.

The entry fee is $25 adult (13 and over), and $15 youth (12 and under), with tickets available at Doug’s Boats, Woodinville; Holiday Sports, Burlington; Greg’s Custom Rods, Lake Stevens; McDaniel’s, Snohomish; Harbor Marine, Bayside Marine, John’s Sporting Goods and Precision Machine, all of Everett; Sky Valley Traders, Monroe; Ted’s Sporting Goods and Ed’s Surplus, both in Lynnwood; Triangle Beverage, Snohomish; Three Rivers Marine, Woodinville; Anglers Choice, Shoreline; The Coffee Box, Sultan; and Outdoor Emporium, Seattle.

The largest pink wins $2,500 (adult) or $500 (youth), and the grand prize draw will award a Lavro drift boat, fully equipped, with trailer — an $8,500 package.

For more information,visit www.baddrawwrestling.com or call Adam Aney at 425-231-1301.

Buoy 10

The popular chinook/coho fishery on the bottom end of the Columbia River opened Aug 1, and the success rate has increased slowly from that point. The latest creel sampling, on Aug. 4, showed 155 anglers in 52 boats, with 15 kings and 13 coho. The fishery will be working on the largest run of “upriver bright” fall chinook in nearly a half-century, according to state biologist Joe Hymer in Vancouver. Those fish also will provide a top recreational fishery later this year in the Hanford Reach portion of the Columbia, above the Tri-Cities.

For more outdoors news, read Wayne Kruse’s blog at www.heraldnet.com/huntingandfishing.

WSU study finds no more genetically modified wheat

Credit: Getty ImagesWheat Field — Credit: Getty Images
Wheat Field

August 7, 2013

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS — Associated Press

PULLMAN, WASH. — A study by Washington State University has found no additional sign of the genetically modified wheat discovered at one Oregon farm this spring.

The tests involved dozens of wheat varieties developed at Washington State, the University of Idaho and Oregon State University, plus varieties from Westbred/Monsanto and Limagrain Cereal Seeds, WSU said this week.

The time-consuming study included checking more than 20,000 individual plots, Washington State University said.

“WSU undertook its own investigation as part of its commitment to serving Northwest farmers,” said James Moyer, director of WSU’s Agricultural Research Center.

The study’s collaboration with the other universities and the commercial seed companies was unprecedented, and reflected the common goal of trying to determine if the genetically modified wheat discovered in Oregon was an isolated case or if the industry had a larger problem, Moyer said.

WSU’s data clearly suggests this was an isolated case, Moyer said.

The tests involved growing seed, spraying infant plants with the herbicide glyphosate and conducting molecular testing. None of the plants showed the glyphosate resistance found in the fields of an as-yet-unnamed Oregon farmer, WSU said.

Last month, the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service also said grain tests and interviews with several hundred farmers found no other instances of herbicide-resistant crops beyond that one Oregon farm.

The modified wheat was discovered in May when field workers at an eastern Oregon farm were clearing acres for the bare offseason and came across a patch of wheat that didn’t belong. The workers sprayed it, but the wheat wouldn’t die, so the farmer sent a sample to Oregon State University to test.

A few weeks later, Oregon State wheat scientists discovered that the wheat was genetically modified. They contacted the USDA, which ran more tests and confirmed the discovery.

Agriculture Department officials have said the modified wheat discovered in the Oregon field is the same strain as a genetically modified wheat that was designed to be herbicide-resistant and was legally tested by seed giant Monsanto a decade ago but never approved.

Most of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States are already modified, or genetically altered to include certain traits, often resistance to herbicides or pesticides. But the country’s wheat crop is not, as many wheat farmers have shown reluctance to use genetically engineered seeds since their product is usually consumed directly. Much of the corn and soybean crop is used as feed.

The USDA has said the wheat would be safe to eat if consumed. But American consumers, like many consumers in Europe and Asia, have shown an increasing interest in avoiding genetically modified foods.

The vast majority of Washington’s wheat is exported.